


I'm A Poet And I Didn't Know It

by im_ashamed



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Avatar References, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21566662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_ashamed/pseuds/im_ashamed
Summary: Soren tries to figure out what poetry is and how you do it.A look at Soren's thoughts on words, poetry, and his place in the world at the end of season 2/beginning of season 3
Relationships: Claudia & Soren (The Dragon Prince), Soren & Viren (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	I'm A Poet And I Didn't Know It

The truth is, Soren wasn’t quite sure what a poet was. When he’d been lying on that hospital bed, he’d been trying to think of what a person could do with just their head, and he thought of Claudia sitting and reading for hours. Content to ignore everything around her as long as she had a book in her lap.

Soren tired to think of the last time he read that much. It was probably back when Viren was still tutoring him. His lessons fizzled out after his father made him learn old epic poetry. Viren must have thought the lush descriptions of ancient battles would catch Soren’s interest where all other topics had failed.

Viren sent Soren to memorize fifty lines of _The Katolian Ode_ , a three hundred year old poem about the battle where humanity finally broke with Xadia. Soren staggered through it for days. The words didn’t make any sense, not on their own, and not all together.

Soren would snap to attention from his daydreams every few minutes, only to find himself still on the same page, surrounded by old dictionaries. It was impossible for him to concentrate when all he was doing was sitting at a desk, flipping a page every now and again.

Running, jumping, his muscles burning with exertion, sweat running down his back— that got his attention, that focused him like nothing else. That made every inch of his body feel alive.

Eventually Claudia sat Soren down and he learned the lines phonetically. Claudia clapped a time as he spoke that made rhythm out of the nonsensical rhyme.

When Soren finally did his recitation, a week later than the deadline his father had set, he only got through half the lines before Viren asked if he had any idea what he was saying. When he admitted that it was all gibberish to him, he knew his father’s disappointment for the first time.

In that arena, it was also the last time. His father never asked him to do something like that again. Soren wasn’t like Claudia or all the creepy-crawlies his father zealously hoarded. There was no magic in him, no untapped potential. He was a big, dumb warrior and nothing else.

Soren didn’t know anything about poetry, or, as he learned upon returning to the palace, what a haiku was. He’d only remembered the word, and the vaguest idea of a cadence.

Upon finding Soren lost among the bookshelves, the librarian said: “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen Claudia today.”  
“No,” Soren said, flushing from the pressure of standing alone in that musty place, lost and overwhelmed by the sheer number of volumes on the endless shelves, “I was looking for a book.”

The librarian’s expression did not change into a mask of surprise as Soren expected. “Which one?” He asked.

“Um, a book of haikus?”

“I don’t know if we have any anthologies dedicated to that, but maybe we’ll find something in the poetry section.” The librarian turned on his heel, and Soren followed, desperately hoping that ‘anthology’ meant book.

The librarian moved briskly turning and stopping at what, to Soren, were completely random intervals. Soren almost ran into the man when he stopped for good.

“Here we are,” The librarian said, gesturing at a bookcase that was only half-full. All the volumes were slim and had hard cloth covers, unlike the leather-bound tomes Claudia hauled around. They reminded Soren of the picture books he used to read as a kid, or, better yet, Claudia would read to him. She would act out the scenes as she went, book in one hand, gesticulating with the other.

The librarian ran his finger over the spines. “Haikus would be from the eastern continents. Earth tribe, I believe. Ah.” He plucked out a volume and handed it to Soren. ‘Four Nations in Harmony’ was stamped in rick black ink on the cover.

“There is also a collection from Rou He Fengci. It’s not all haikus, but it is quite good. Would you like that as well?”

“Yes,” Soren said, because he wasn’t going to look like some idiot who didn’t know what he was doing. He gratefully took the books, and secreted them back to his room in his breastplate in the exact way he told new recruits not to hide things.

Soren sat on his bed. His room was unchanged from when he left a few weeks ago. It barely even needed airing out, beyond its usual stink of sweaty underclothes. The sameness was eerie rather than comforting, so Soren dived into the books he was holding.

The haiku book contained a translation note, in which Soren learned what a haiku was, and also that they were really, really hard to translate. This was the most interesting thing in the book. All the poems felt like some variation on:

_Water, earth, fire, air_

_Elements in harmony_

_A world in balance_

Or:

_Light strikes the water_

_Transporting me home to the_

_Scent of fresh snow_

Or something. They were kind of pretty, but after reading three they all started to run together in Soren’s head. He turned to the other book, and took a moment to admire the characters embossed on the front, running his fingers over the divots that made up _Musings, by_ 肉 和 讽刺. He felt his nerves edging towards fear. For some reason, he needed this to work. He needed there to be magic inside this thing.

_1._

_The shining moon evokes you_

_again and again_

_But my memories grow insubstantial_

_as your light_

_2._

_My love is a river_

_Caring for all who set up along its banks_

_But I can not expect the mud_

_Torn from its home and swept into the ocean_

_To understand._

Okay, Soren didn’t spend a lot of time reading, but it was still true that this was unlike anything he had ever read before.

The words in these poems made sense on their own, but all lined up together they reminded Soren of when he was a kid and he would spar with the higher ranking members of the king’s guard. When they struck him he could feel them holding back. A sensation along his blade, in his bones, told him that the blow which forced him back wasn’t even half of what they were capable of.

These poems were like that. They looked simple-he could probably memorize one without any help from Claudia-but they weren’t just pretty words combined to make a nice picture in his mind. They stuck to his thoughts like burrs, forcing him to pay attention, to consider the emotions within them that he didn’t even have words for.

Soren slowly made his way through the book. Not because it was difficult or boring, but because he liked to turn over one or two at a time. He would let them stew in his thoughts while he went for a run to break up the monotony of unfilled time while he and Claudia waited for an answer to the question of what would become of them, of their father.

The poems Soren liked the most made him feel like he was touching the words embossed on the cover. As though he could trace their contours for hours.

Soren almost dropped the book when he turned the page and found a verse entitled, _‘To My Sister’:_

_It takes a thousand people to change the world._

_But it takes each one._

_I can not say you changed the world._

_But the world would not have changed without you._

This guy who wrote all this stuff…He was just a guy with a sister. Like Soren.

Soren was struck by the image of a man a hundred thousand miles away, on a different continent, bent over a desk, quietly scratching away at a piece of paper, making art with deft strokes of his pen.

Soren sat at his tiny desk, where he was more likely to sharpen a sword than write anything, and put pen to paper.

Insubstantial is a cool word. 

But I don’t have anything to use it for.

Soren stared at the words. That didn’t look right. It didn’t feel like anything. He crossed it out and tried again.

Bread sandwiches

are just bread.

That was a little better, but it didn’t quite work. It wasn’t interesting, just true.

Soren tapped his foot against the desk. He leaned his chair back on two legs, then grabbed the Fengci book off his bed. He opened it to a random page.

_57._

_‘We want to make a new world’_

_They say._

_They want a new coat of paint._

_They want the fresh scent of a polished turd._

_‘We want to make things right’_

_They say._

_They want to put everything in its place._

_They want all the numbers to line up in their account books._

_‘We want to put the past behind us’_

_They say._

_They want the past only so far back._

_The way the vanguard moves to the front to claim their glory._

_‘We want everything to change’_

_They say._

_I say_

_‘I remember how everything changed when you attacked’_

Soren puts his head down on his desk. He can’t do this. There is nothing untapped within him, just that last bit of body fat he hasn’t yet turned into muscle.

* * *

“Soren, you were just confused,” Claudia says, and Soren looks between her and his father. He recognizes the pride on his father’s face. He knows what he heard, he knows what he thought, and he is almost certain he knows what he was meant to think.

As he and Claudia ascend the dungeon steps, he remembers all the time he watched his father praise Claudia for her knowledge. Her cunning.

He thinks:

_If love is an endless river_

_I am a sunken stone._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I was very light-handed with the avatar references. Incredibly slight, that. You probably missed it.
> 
> Also, I'm on twitter @sheepydraws. Come scream about the dragon prince with me.


End file.
